Ted Grant

The Colonial Revolution
and the Deformed Workers' States

In bourgeois countries in the past, where the
bourgeoisie has a role to play and looks forward confidently to
the future - ie when it is genuinely progressive in developing
the productive forces - it has decades and generations to perfect
the state as an instrument of its own class rule. The army,
police, civil service, middle layers and especially all key
positions at the top; heads of civil service, heads of
departments, police chiefs, the officer corps and especially the
colonels and generals are carefully selected to serve the needs
and interests of the ruling class. With a developing economy and
a mission and a role they eagerly serve the 'national interest'
ie the interest of the possessing class - the ruling class.

In Syria, as in all the ex-colonial countries,
the imperialists, in this case the French, partly under the
pressure of their rivals, especially American imperialism, were
compelled to relinquish their direct military domination.
The state which emerged is not fixed and static. The weakness and
incapacity of the bourgeoisie gave a certain independence to the
military caste. Hence the perpetual coups and counter-coups of
the military. But in the last analysis they reflect the class
interests of the ruling class. They cannot play an independent
role.

The struggle between the cliques in the army
reflects the instability and contradictions in the given society.
The personal aims of the generals reflect the differing interests
of social classes or fractions of classes of society, the
petit-bourgeois in its various fractions, the bourgeoisie, or
even under certain conditions the proletariat in so far as thay
are successful in gaining power. The officer caste must reflect the
interest of some class or grouping in society. They do
not represent themselves though of course they can plunder the
society and elevate their own ruling caste. Nevertheless they
must have a class basis in a given society.

Bonapartist regimes do not rest on air but
balance between the classes. In the final analysis they represent
whichever is the dominant class in society. The economy of that
class determines its class character. Some of these countries, as
in Latin America, a semi-colonial continent which was under the
domination of British then especially American imperialism for
the last century, nevertheless, have been nominally independent
for more than a century. In consequence, despite a period of
turbulence the ruling class of landowners and capitalists has had
sufficient period to perfect their state. Sometimes the armed
forces of different fractions or factions of armed forces, can
reflect different fractions of the ruling class and even the
pressures of imperialism, primarily American imperialism.

But, up to now, they have always reflected the
interest of the ruling class in the defence of private ownership.

In Burma, where the regime, newly emerged from
British domination and where the ruling class was incapable of
successfully 'holding the country together', it faced a series of
rebellions and wars. The army was formed from the the
Anti-Fascist Peoples Freedom League, which described itself as
'socialist'.

With China as a model next door, the army
leaders tired of the incapacity of the landowners and capitalists
to solve the problems of Burma. Basing themselves on the support
of the workers and peasants, they organised a coup, expropriated
the landowners and capitalists and established Burma as a
'Burmese Buddhist Socialist State'.

China

Yet up to the Russian revolution even Lenin
denied the possibility of the victory of the proletarian
revolution in a backward country. The Chinese revolution of
1944-9 did not proceed on the model of the revolution of 1925-7.
It was a peasant war, which took place because of the
complete incapacity of the bourgeoisie to carry out the tasks of
the bourgois-democratic revolution - the ending of landlordism,
national unification and the expulsion of imperialism - it ended
with victory to the Chinese Stalinists.

The programme of the Chinese Stalinists was not
fundamentally different to that of Castro later in Cuba: 50 or
100 years of 'national capitalism' and an alliance with the
'national bourgeoisie'. Hence the belief of many American
bourgeois that they were 'agrarian reformers'.

Only the Marxist tendency in Britain argued
against the Stalinists and the alleged 'Trotskyist' sects and
explained the inevitability of Mao's victory and the
establishment of a deformed workers' state.

At a time when Mao and the Chinese CP had the
programme of capitalism and 'national democracy' we could predict
the inevitability of proletarian Bonapartism as the next
stage in China. This had nothing in common with the methods of
the proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917.

Power was gained through the peasant war by
giving land to the soldiers in Chiang Kai Shek's army. Then, by
balancing between the classes and playing them off against each
other in Bonapartist fashion, once military victory was achieved,
landlordism and capitalism were expropriated. Nearly all the
so-called 'Trotskyist' sects now accept the accomplished fact.
But never before in history has it even been theoretically posed
that a peasant war on classical lines could lead to a
workers' state, however deformed. The workers in China were
passive throughout the civil war for reasons we will not enter
here. But here was a perfect example of one class - the peasants
in the form of the Red Army - carrying out the tasks of another.

It is amusing now to see the sects without
turning a hair, swallowing the idea that a 'workers' state' was
established in China by the peasant army, only because at the
head of the army was the so-called 'Communist' Party. In
classical Marxist theory this idea would be precisely considered
hair-raising and fantastic. The peasants, as a class, are
least capable of assuming a socialist consciousness.

It is an aberration of Marxism to think that
such a process is 'normal'. It can only be explained by the impasse
of capitalism in China, the paralysis of imperialism, the
existence of a strong deformed Bonapartist state in Stalinist
Russia, and most important of all, the delay in the victory in
the industrially advanced countries of the world. The colonial
countries cannot wait. The problems are too crushing. Thereis no way forward on the basis of capitalism. Hence the
peculiar aberrations in colonial countries. But the price for
this, as in the Soviet Union, is a second political revolution to
put the control of society, industry and the state in the hands
of the proletariat. Only thus could the first genuine beginnings
of the transition of socialism, or rather steps in that
direction, commence.

The wide support for 'socialism' not only among
the working class, but among the peasants and wide layers of the
petit-bourgeoisie in the cities in colonial countries, is the
expression of the complete blind alley of landlordism and
capitalism in the colonial world in the modern epoch. It is also
a result of the Russian and Chinese revolutions and their
achievements in developing industry and the economy. It is this
that lays the groundwork for the development of proletarian
Bonapartism.

The state can be reduced to armed bodies of
men, according to Engels. With the defeat and destruction of the
police and army of Chiang Kai Shek, with the destruction of the
army of Batista(1) in Cuba, power was in the hands respectively of Mao and
Castro. The fact that nominally Mao was a 'Communist' and Castro
a bourgeois democrat altered nothing.

Moscow's Image

So far was Mao from the model of the
proletarian revolution that on entering Shanghai and other
cities, workers who had seized their factories and met Mao with
demonstrations of red flags were instantly shot in order to
'restore order'! The state created by Mao was in the image of
Moscow, 1949, not Moscow 1917!

Mao, in typical Bonapartist fashion on the
basis of the peasant army, always an instrument of (bourgeois)
Bonapartism in the past, balanced between the classes. Having
perfected a state in the image of Moscow, leaningon
the workers and peasants, he could snuff out the bourgeoisie
painlessly. As Trotsky put it, for a lion you need a gun, for
a flea, a fingernail will do! Therefore, having balanced between
the bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants in order to prevent
the workers from taking power, Mao and his gang - after
perfecting the state - could then crush the bourgeoisie before
turning on the workers and peasants to crush whatever elements of
workers' democracy had developed.

The bureaucracy then developed a totalitarian
one-party dictatorship, centred round the Bonapartist
dictatorship of one single individual - Mao. But, not for nothing
has Marxist theory given the task of achieving the socialist
revolution and the transition to socialism to the working class.
This is not an arbitrary role but because of the specific role inproduction of the proletariat which gives it a specific
consciousness possessed by no other class. Least of all can
the petit-bourgeois peasant develop this consciousness. A
revolution based on the latter class by its very nature would be
doomed to degeneration and Bonapartism. It is precisely because a
proletarian Bonapartist dictatorship protects the privileges of
the elite of state, party, the army, industry and the
intellectuals of art and science that it has succeeded in so many
backward countries.

Marxism finds in the development of the
productive forces the key to the development of society. Ona capitalist basis there is no longer a way forward,
particularly for backward countries. That is why army
officers, intellectuals and others, affected by the decay of
their societies can undercertain conditions switch
their allegiance. A change to proletarian Bonapartism actually
enlarges their power, prestige, privileges and income. They
become the sole commanding and directing stratum of the society,
raising themselves even higher over the masses than in the past.
Instead of being subservient to the weak, craven and ineffectual
bourgeoisie they become the masters of society.

Transitional Economies

The tendency towards statification of
the productive forces, which have grown beyond the limits of
private ownership, is manifest in the most highly developed
economies and even in the most reactionary colonial countries.

There is no possibility of a consistent,
uninterrupted and continuous increase in productive forces in the
countries of the so-called third world on a capitalist basis.
Production stagnates or falls. In the world recessions,
particularly in the smaller countries, living standards fall.
There is no way out on the basis of the capitalist system. That
explains the terror regimes of bourgeois Bonapartism like that of
Pakistan, Indonesia, Argentina, Chile and Zaire. But with
bayonets and bullets, on the basis of an out-dated and antiquated
system, only very temporary respite is given. Discontent
multiplies and is reflected in the officer caste of the armed
forces and throughout the society. This in turn leads to
conspiracies of individuals and groups of officers.

The army is a mirrorof society and
reflects its contradictions. That and not the mere whims of
the officers concerned, is the cause of the upheavals as in
Syria. It is an indication of the agonised crisis of society,
which cannot be solved in the old way. These strata of society
can espouse 'socialism' of the Stalinist variety - proletarian
Bonapartism - all the more enthusiastically because of their
contempt for the masses of workers and peasants.

The horrible caricature of workers' rule in
Russia, China, and the other countries of deformed workers'
states attracts them precisely because of the position of the
'intellectual' educated cadres of that society. What is repulsive
to Marxism is what attracts the Stalinists.

All that these states have in common with
healthy workers' states or with the Russia of 1917-23 is state
ownership of the means of production. On that basis they can plan
and develop the productive resources with forced marches at a
pace absolutely impossible on their former landlord-capitalist
basis. This is possible of course for only a limited period of
time. At some point the Stalinist regimes become an absolute
hindrance and a fetter to production. Russia and Eastern Europe
are reaching these limits. In common with a healthy workers'
state on the accepted Marxist norm is the fact that they are
transitional economies between capitalism and socialism.

But Marxism teaches that a movement towards
socialism requires the control, guidance and participation of the
proletariat. With a privileged elite in uncontrolled dominance
and not reconciled to the loss of its status in a 'withering
away' of the state, this produces new contradictions. As the
corruption, nepotism, waste, mismanagement and chaos which
bureaucratic control necessarily involves comes more and more
into contradiction with the needs of social development, this
manifests itself in the heightened antagonism between the
proletariat and the bureaucratic elite.

Trotsky long ago explained that in the case of
Russia the bureaucracy developed the productive forces in a way
in which the bourgeoisie was incapable of doing, but at three
times the cost to the masses. The bureaucracy fulfills the
function, a relatively progressive function, which the
bourgeoisie had accomplished in the past. But Trotsky explained
that this role also engenders its own contradictions. The
bureaucracy is in some senses even less prepared than the
bourgeoisie to reconcile itself to the loss of privilege and
power. Instead it grows even more to become a monstrous cancer on
society. It can only be removed by political revolution.

This will be triggered either by events at home
or the successful gaining of power by the proletariat and the
constitution of a workers' democracy in one of the advanced
capitalist countries. It will be by social revolution in the West
or by victorious political revolution in Russia and Eastern
Europe that a healthy workers' state and a workers' democracy
will be created. It must be emphasised that the only features
these deformed workers' states have in common with the ideal
workers' state is state ownership of the economy and a plan of
production. Only one of the 'idealist' and 'eclectic' sects could
discover a fundamental difference between the peasant war in
which Mao came to power and the guerrilla war of Castro, based on
peasants and semi-peasants and landless peasants as well as some
ex-workers. There is not much difference, despite the bourgeois
democratic ideas in Castro's head which in any event were not all
that different from the programme on which Mao fought the civil
war.

At least in the last stages of the struggle,
the participation of the working class, with the general strike
in Havana, turned the scales in Castro's favour. Nothing of this
sort happened in the civil war in China of 1945-9. Nor was this
kind of intervention desired by Mao; true, had it not been for
the stupidity of American imperialism the outcome could have been
different in Cuba. But with the impasse of Cuban capitalism like
that of Chinese capitalism, just as Mao had used the strong
proletarian Bonapartist state of Russia as a model, so Castro
used Eastern Europe and China as models in his conflict with
Americanimperialism.

In both cases this marked an enormous step
forward historically. Landlordism and capitalism were eliminated.
That meant the removal of the fetters of semi-feudal landlordism
and of private ownership of industry. The monopoly of foreign
trade, following the Russian model, is also a powerful
progressive factor. These measures meant a gigantic release of
the constraints on the productive forces. Hence inadvance
we could hail the Chinese revolution as the second greatest
event in human history, the Russian revolution being the first.
Nevertheless because of its Bonapartist character - and the
inevitable vested interest of the bureaucracy in maintaining the
rule of privilege, prestige, power and income for the ruling
layers of the bureaucracy itself - the masses would have to pay
with a second revolution before there could be a workers'
democracy on the level of that in Russia of 1917-23.

Because of the incapacity of the sects to apply
Marxism and 'Marxist philosophy' in a concrete manner they have
landed themselves in ludicrous contradictions. Thus they declared
Eastern Europe to be state capitalist in 1945-47 - while Russia,
which occupied Eastern Europe with the Red Army, was a
'degenerated workers' state'.

When Tito broke with Stalin, overnight, from
mysteriously being 'capitalist', Yugoslavia became a healthier
workers' state than even Russia in 1917! This did not prevent
these sects from simultaneously declaring Eastern Europe still to
be capitalist. China remained 'state capitalist' according to
them until 1951 or 1953. Then, 'Hey Presto', China, from being
'state capitalist', was mysteriously transformed into a 'healthy
workers' state'!

All this muddle and theoretical confusion has
never been explained by any one of these petit-bourgeois
tendencies masquerading as Marxists. One sect claimed Cuba was a
petit-bourgeois Bonapartist state while describing China as a
relatively healthy workers' state in which political revolution
was not necessary. Not a single one of these tendencies was
capable of analysing the main forces and processes of the epoch,
in which the colonial world saw a caricature of permanent
revolution in which weird and deformed workers' states were
being set up. Not a single one of them understood the meaning of
the Chinese 'cultural revolution'. Some hailed this as a second
version of the 'Paris Commune'! Only recently - some 30 years too
late - some reluctantly concluded that the Chinese revolution was
deformed from the start. Our tendency explained the
process in advance of Mao's victory.

All the objective conditions for a socialist
revolution are now maturing in Western Europe, Japan and the USA.
The process, however, will be protracted because of the weakness
of the forces of genuine Marxism. It is the delay of the
revolution in the West, and now its protracted character, which
gives room for these peculiar regimes in the neo-colonial
countries. They are reaching unbearable tensions with
semi-starvation of great masses without a roof or a crust. The
insolent parasitism and luxury of the landlords and capitalists
in contrast, leaning on imperialism, invests all the
contradictions in these societies with an explosive force. It is
on the basis of this weakness of imperialism, the glaring
rottenness and decay of landlordism-capitalism - which makes
possible the development of the curious process of proletarian
Bonapartism. Taking advantage of the revolt of the masses of
peasants, petit-bourgeoisie and even workers, the elite of
officers, intellectuals etc, can emerge, as in Ethiopia, with
firm power in their hands on the basis of the support of the
workers and peasants. They can perfect a 'KGB' secret police of
their own to silence anyone who would object to their privileges.

The peasantry, by its very nature a class of
individuals not bound together by production, is therefore the
perfect instrument for bourgeois or proletarian Bonapartism. It
is a class that can inherently be manipulated and deceived; a
class that looks towards the 'Tsar as a father of the people', or
to the god-head, Mao. The urban petit-bourgeois too have these
attributes; in Germany and Italy they looked to Hitler and
Mussolini as 'leaders'. Only the proletariat stands firmly
for genuine democracy - ie workers' democracy in a workers' state
- which is the only system where its direct rule can be
manifested.

Our tendency has explained and predicted these
processes. There is no real possibility of moving forward in the
colonial world on a capitalist basis. It is this, plus the
lagging of the proletarian revolution in the advanced
industrialised countries, which has led to these regimes taking
ten steps forward and five steps back. They can - at least for a
period in most cases - develop the productive forces with seven
league boots, on the basis of proletarian Bonapartism. They carry
out in backward countries the historic role which was carried out
by the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries in the past.

The whole essence of Trotsky's theory of the
permanent revolution lies in the idea that the colonial
bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of the backward countries are
incapable of carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic
revolution. This is because of their links with the landlords
and the imperialists. The banks have mortgages on the land,
industrialists have landed estates in the country, the landlords
invest in industry and the whole is entangled together and linked
with imperialism in a web of vested interests opposed to change.

Under these circumstances the task of carrying
out the bourgeois-democratic revolution fell on the shoulders of
the proletariat. But the proletariat, having conquered power at
the head of the peasantry and the majority of the nation, would
not stop at the accomplishment of the bourgeois-democratic tasks
of expropriating the landowners, unifying the nation, and
expelling the imperialists. It would then pass on to the
socialist tasks, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the
setting up of a workers' state.

But the socialist tasks could not be
encompassed in a single country, especially a backward colonial
country. The revolution would have to spread to the more advanced
countries. Hence the term for this process, permanent revolution
beginning as a bourgeois revolution, becoming a socialist one,
ending in international revolution.

It is true that, owing to the development of
the Stalinist bureaucracy and the reformist degeneration of the
Communist Parties, exceptional difficulties have been put in the
path of the proletariat in both advanced and backward countries.
But the impasse of landlordism and capitalism in the so-called
third world has been aggravated during the course of the decades
since the outbreak of the second world war. For a period, the
industrialised capitalist countries passed through a relative
development of productive forces, once the political
preconditions had been established by the betrayal in the early
post-war period of Stalinism and reformism.

But while living standards in the West
increased at least in absolute terms, in the 'third world' with
few exceptions there was a decline in already low living
standards. The decay of antiquated land relations under the
inexorable pressure of the world market continued apace. A large
surplus population of paupers, beggars and lumpens is endemic in
the colonial world. On the old relations there is no way out. In
Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, Burma, Syria, Angola,
Mozambique, Aden, Benin, Ethiopia and as models, Cuba and China
(which in their turn had the model of Eastern Europe as a beacon
showing the way) there has been a transformation of social
relations.

This is because of the rotten ripeness of world
capitalism for the socialist revolution. But all history shows
that where, for one reason or another, the new progressive class
is incapable of carrying out its functions of transforming
society, this is often done (in a reactionary way, perhaps) by
other classes or castes. Thus in Japan big sections of the feudal
lords became capitalists and in Germany - as Marx, Engels, Lenin
and Trotsky recognised - the landowning Junkers of East Prussia
under Bismarck and the monarchy carried out the task of the
national unification of Germany - a task of the bourgeois
democratic revolution.

Attractive Power

As Marx long ago explained, there is no such
thing as a supra-historical blue-print. It is necessary to take
the material objective reality as it is and then explain it. That
is the method of 'Marxist philosophy' and not the philosophical
gibberish of the sects. But it is not only necessary to see
objective reality as it is, but to explain the process that
brought it into being, the contradictions encompassing it, the
law of social movement which it represents and the future
processes of contradictions and change which will envelop it. Its
process of birth, development, decay and the changes which will
destroy it.

Under the conditions of the decay of
capitalism-landlordism in the colonial countries, all the social
contradictions are aggravated to an extreme. Social tensions
reach an unbearable level. Hence in one country after another in
Asia, Africa and Latin America, bourgeois democracy is replaced
by bourgeois Bonapartist dictatorships or proletarian Bonapartist
dictatorships.

In the above-named ex-colonial countries not
one proceeded on the model of the norm of the socialist
revolution. Neither did the countries of Eastern Europe before
them in the aftermath of the second world war.

The great Marxist teachers in the past have
often explained that once the norm of the socialist revolution
has been established in the main capitalist countries, it would
have an irresistible appeal to the rest of the world and result
in a painless transformation without conflict. Even the
bourgeoisie would recognise the superiority of workers'
democracy, apart from the effect this would have on the world
working class. Marx himself believed that in this way the
backward areas of the world, and even the backward countries of
Europe, would be brought forward by the advanced industrialised
countries acting as a magnet and a model of socialism. Lenin and
Trotsky conceived of the socialist revolution taking place in
some backward countries first only with the leading role and
participation of the proletariat. The proletariat would lead the
petit-bourgeois masses, especially the peasantry, to the
overthrow of landlordism and capitalism and then link the workers
to the international working class and the tasks of the world
revolution.

The Bonapartist totalitarian dictatorship in
Russia, a completely deformed workers' state, repels workers in
advanced capitalist countries. This is because nothing remains of
October except the abolition of landlordism and capitalism, a
plan of production, plus the monopoly of foreign trade, albeit
bureaucratically twisted and distorted.

But nevertheless the mighty achievements of the
revolution, the productive advances, the abolition of
backwardness bringing Russia to the position of the second
industrial power of the world, have an enormous attractive power
for the colonial masses. (This is further reinforced by the
example of the Chinese revolution which in the space of less than
a quarter of a century has transformed China into a mighty
power.) In most of the colonial countries where it still exists,
bourgeois democracy is a hollow and empty shell backed up at
various times by 'states of siege', states of emergency and even
martial law.

Consequently the lack of workers' democracy in
these proletarian Bonapartist states is not such a drawback in
attracting the masses. It is a positive attractive feature as far
as the professional and lower army officers are concerned. The
solution of their most pressing problems of food, clothing and
shelter loom large in the minds of the colonial masses.

Ethiopia

This in its turn has an enormous effect in the
countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The
bourgeois-Bonapartist regimes in the colonial countries are
charged with terrible contradictions. Their problems are
insoluble. They spend large sums on armaments, further
exacerbating the poverty of the masses. They are inherently
unstable. They provoke the hatred of the workers, the
petit-bourgeoisie, the students and peasants. Even the weak
bourgeoisie they represent comes into collision with them.

It is in this social soil that plots,
counter-plots and conspiracies in the army flourish. The army (or
armed forces) is always moulded in the image of society and is
not independent of it. Where the army dominates, that indicates a
crisis in society and a regime of crisis.

Different cliques, groups or even individuals
at the top in the army come to reflect groupings, sections of
classes or classes in society. They do not represent themselves
but precisely reflect the antagonistic interests of different
classes in society.

Under conditions of social crisis people
change. This applies to classes and even individuals. Thus Marx
explained that with the decay of feudalism a section of the
feudal lords, bigger or smaller as the case may be, goes over to
the side of the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolution. A
section of the bourgeoisie, particularly the intellectual
bourgeoisie, can also put themselves on the standpoint of the
proletariat.

No more barren, formalistic, anti-dialectical,
philosophically idealist, anti-'Marxist philosophy' idea in the
history of the movement has been put forward than by those who
argue that because Castro began his revolutionary struggle as
a bourgeois democrat with bourgeois democratic ideas and goals that
therefore he must remain a bourgeois democrat for all eternity.
They forget that Marx and Engels themselves began as bourgeois
democrats who broke decisively with the bourgeoisie and
became leaders of the proletariat.

Under conditions of the crisis of capitalism in
Portugal,(2) a semi-colonial country, a majority of the officer
caste, sickened by the decades of dictatorship and the seemingly
unending wars in Africa which they realised they could not win,
moved in the direction of revolution and 'socialism'. Only our
tendency explained this process.

This gave an impetus to the movement of the
working class, which then reacted in its turn on the army. This
affected not only the rank and file, and the lower ranks of the
officers, but even some admirals and generals who were sincerely
desirous of solving the problems of Portuguese society and the
Portuguese people.

This was something that would have been
impossible in previous revolutions. Thus, 99 per cent of the
officer caste supported Franco in the Spanish civil war.

True enough, because of the reformist and
Stalinist betrayal of the Portuguese revolution which prevented
it from being carried through to completion, there has been a
reaction. The army has been purged and purged again to become a
more reliable instrument of the bourgeoisie.

But how far this has succeeded remains to be
tested in the events of the revolution in the coming months and
years.

But what it has demonstrated is the need for a
genuine dialectical understanding and interpretation of the
events of the present epoch. If such a transfonnation was
possible, in a semi-colonial but imperialist capitalist Portugal,
how much more could similar processes take place in the newly
independent countries of Africa and of Asia?

Events in Ethiopia have crushingly confirmed
the theses we have worked out. There, the famine brought about by
Haile Selassie and the landlord nobility, was the last
catastrophe even the officer caste was prepared to tolerate. The
callous indifference of the Emperor and the landlord class to the
famine and the death from starvation of hundreds of thousands and
possibly even millions, plus the accumulated social
contradictions in a backward country under the pressure of
imperialism, pushed the middle layers of the officer caste to
organise a coup.

This in its turn awakened the movement of the
small working class in Addis Abbaba and the students and
petit-bourgeois layers in the capital and in the towns. It
awakened the peasantry also into a cataclysmic movement to gain
control of land. Thus the 1000 year old 'empire' and its class
structure crumbled to dust.

The crisis in the army and the attempts at
counter-revolution, the further impetus this gave to the
guerrilla war in Eritrea, the querrilla war in the Ogaden, aided
by the direct intervention of Somalia, the uprisings of the Galla
and other tribes, all acted as a spur to the revolution.

The movement of the classes in turn had its
effect on the new ruling junta in the army. It produced splits
and individual and group conspiracies of officers. These
reflected the classes in battle in Ethiopia and the developing
civil war in the whole country. Whatever the individual whims
of the officers, they reflected (as in Syria) - and had to
reflect - the class struggle taking place. Hardly any wished
for a return to the old regime.

The model of the Emperor's landlord semi-feudal
regime was rejected by the bulk of the officer caste. But there
were differences as to how far to go, which ended in armed
conflicts and executions. This, in a distorted way perhaps,
reflected the struggle of the classes in Ethiopia.

It ended in the victory of Lieutenant Colonel
Mengistu. Already the land had been divided among the peasants
and industry nationalised without compensation to the
imperialists and the native capitalists (though of course
compensation is not necessarily the decisive factor).

In the struggles Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu
emerged victorious as a Bonapartist dictator under the influence
of the wars and civil wars. In order to obtain mass support Mengistu,
formerly a high-up officer of the Emperor, has been forced to go
all the way. He has declared himself a 'Marxist-Leninist'
(probably without reading a single word of Marx or Lenin) and set
about creating a one party 'Marxist-Leninist' totalitarian
dictatorship. This is in the image of Moscow or Peking. The
landlords and capitalists are expropriated and the imperialist
countries are without real influence on the processes taking
place in Ethiopia.

In this case the process is clear. It is even
clearer than in Mozambique, Angola or the former Aden, and this
without a direct struggle against imperialist occupation.

The imperialists are too weak and debilitated
to intervene directly by military means and can only grind their
teeth in impotence.

But undoubtedly only the Militant
foresaw these possibilities in advance for many countries in
Asia, Africa and Latin America. The revolution, or rather the
primary tasks of the revolution, in backward countries have been
accomplished in the regimes mentioned above. Landlordism has been
eliminated. Capitalism has been destroyed, the influence of
imperialism dispelled.

Thus the bourgeois origin of the leadership of
the guerrilla movement in Cuba was of third or fifth rate
importance. What was important was the attempt to take action to
bring Cuba back to neo-colonial status which precipitated the
break of Castro with American imperialism.

It is the social and economic similarities
which are decisive for a Marxist in the social overturns in these
countries.

To carry through a revolution like that of
Russia in October 1917 requires the consciousness, the action,
the understanding and the active participation and movement of
the proletariat itself in the overthrow of capitalism and
landlordism. It requires organs and organisations through which
the proletariat can move, such as soviets, shop stewards
committees, trade unions and so on. After the victory of the rule
of the workers, the checking and control can be effected by such
organs of workers' rule.

In a revolution according to the norm
such ad hoc committees and traditional organisations are
indispensable. They are a training ground for the workers in the
art of running the state, of developing the solidarity and
understanding of the workers. After a victorious overthrow of
capital they become vehicles for workers' rule, the organs of the
new state and of workers' democracy.

But where - as in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba,
Syria, Ethiopia - the overthrow takes place with the support of
the workers and peasants certainly but without their active
control, clearly the result must be different. The
petit-bourgeois intellectuals, army officers, leaders of
guerrilla bands use the workers and peasants as cannon fodder,
merely as points of support, as a gun rest, so to speak.

Their aim, conscious or unconscious, is not
power for the workers and peasants, but power for their elite.
They had and have their model in Stalinist Russia.The revolution
- change in property relations -begins where the Russian
revolution ended, Stalinist Russia of 1945-9, or if you prefer,
Stalinist Russia of 1978. They are fundamentally the same; a one
party totalitarian state where the proletariat is helpless and
atomised, with an apparatus of control of the state by the
officials. The guerrilla army chiefs, who with an iron hand
imposed discipline, take control undoubtedly with the support of
the masses but with no organs of workers' rule independent of the
state. Also, none of the rights and powers of the workers and
peasants, which the existence of soviets as organs of workers'
power would mean, exist.

For a transition to a Bonapartist workers'
state such organs of workers' democracy, indispensable for a
healthy workers' state, would be an enormous hindrance. They
constituted a tremendous obstacle to the Stalinist bureaucracy in
Russia, which had to wage a Herculean struggle and even a
one-sided civil war to erase the last remnants of workers'
democracy, which stood in the way of their untrammelled and
dictatorial rule. This was reflected through the one man
dictatorship of Stalin and his successors.

What is important is that this was the model of
'socialism' for Mao, for Castro, for Mengistu, for the Burmese
generals and for the Baathist 'Muslim' generals in Syria.

Army and Intellectuals

It is important to see that what all these
variegated forces have in common is not the secondary personal
differences but the social forces and class forces they
represent.

Mengistu, Castro, the Burmese generals broke
with their class background and the advantages or disadvantages
of their bourgeois and university education and outlook. It is
true that they did not put themselves on the standpoint of the
proletariat - as Marx and Lenin did - but they accepted the much
easier 'socialism' which entailed the individual rule of them
and of their elite on the backs of the working class and
peasants.

All individual differences are stamped out by
the decisive class and economic changes which they have presided
over in their countries and their societies.

All the self-styled 'Marxist-Leninist' sects
have not even understood the ABC of Marxism as taught by its
founder and echoed by Lenin and Trotsky. This is something to
marvel at. The emancipation of the working class is the task of
the workers themselves. This is not because it is some kind of
penance which the workers must do or because they are 'nice
people'. It is because without this there is the inevitability of
a small minority having a monopoly of culture they will then use
- and inevitably abuse - against the interests of the workers and
peasants and in their own interests. Also, mobilisation of the
proletariat, its conscious struggle for power, and fight for
workers' democracy, transforms the proletariat and fits it for
the task of workers' rule. This then partially rubs off onto the
peasants and petit-bourgeoisie which follow the proletariat in
both the advanced and the backward countries. This process does
not take place with the struggle of the petit-bourgeois guerrilla
bands or where radical army officer cliques take power.

Thus, the intellectual and army elite in all
the social revolutions and overturns in the countries mentioned
took state countrol firmly into their own hands. They had the
passive - or more or less active support - of the masses. But
there was not the conscious organised movement of the
proletariat. The peasants and petit-bourgeoisie are not a viable
substitute for the 'self-movement' of the proletariat.

It is a striking fact that in the case of every
sect, they accept Mao and the Chinese revolution ex-post-facto
and find in the 'Communist' badge of Mao the excuse for this.
In reality Mao was an ex-Communist who had broken with the
proletariat and put himself at the head of a peasant war.

The fact that he later balanced between the
classes and in typical Bonapartist fashion, leaned on the workers
for a time, alters nothing. The fact that the Peking gangsters
called their hideous caricature 'socialism' or sometimes the
dictatorship of the 'proletariat' also alters nothing. There is
no fundamental difference economically or socially between any of
these regimes. This means that the secondary differences in
comparison with the fundamentals are only of trifling importance.

Lenin's Mistake

It is no accident also that all the sects base
themselves on the mistake of Lenin in What is to be Done -
that the proletariat on its own is capable only of 'trade
union consciousness' and not 'socialist consciousness'. In
reality this is not Lenin's idea but appropriately Kautsky's.
Lenin discovered his mistake, and Lenin's works, as those of Marx
and Engels and Trotsky, not to add Luxemburg and Mehring, are the
living refutation of this idea. In all 55 volumes of Lenin's
works there is never again the repetition of this error. In fact,
without idealising the proletariat, as with all the great
Marxists - all his works, down to the smallest article, are
saturated with confidence and trust in the mighty power of
the proletariat as the only vehicle which would
lead mankind to socialism. This, of course, comes from the
dialectical materialism of Marx.

In reality all these gentlemen of the sects
have a haughty if secret - and sometimes not completely secret at
that - contempt for the working class. Dialectically, while
embracing enthusiastically this false idea about trade union
consciousness, at the same time, they worship at the shrine of Ho
Chi Minh or Mao or Castro or Tito or some other proletarian
Bonapartist dictator. They are incapable of understanding the
process of history and the temporary conjuncture of the economic
upswing which led to a long lull in the class struggle in the
West and the continuing crisis of society in the underdeveloped
world. This was one of the corollary factors of the West's boom
and inevitably led to the rise and development of proletarian
Bonapartism in the colonial world, which the dominance of
Stalinism in Russia and the predominance of Stalinism and
reformism in the workers' movement in the world contributed to.
Only genuine Marxism has been able from the beginning to explain
all these 'outlandish' phenomena from the viewpoint of the
working class and the class nature of society and the organic
crisis of world capitalism which is manifested first of
all at its weaker and more backward extremities.

All these proletarian Bonapartist regimes are
temporary aberrations on the road of the world revolution. The
excrescence which Stalinism represents will be eliminated almost
in passing when the mighty proletariat of one of the advanced
countries takes power in the West or the regimes of Russia and
Eastern Europe are regenerated by the overthrow of bureaucracies.

In a number of works we have traced the
contradictions and inconsistencies which the sects show on the
question of what is a healthy workers' state with 'bureaucratic
deformations', or what is a deformed workers' state. Though both
are based on state ownership, they are fundamentally different
in their super-structure. For that reason a political
revolution is necessary in the case of a deformed workers'
state before a 'workers' democracy' or 'the dictatorship of the
proletariat' in its political as well as economic sense, can be
established. On the other hand, a workers' state with
'bureaucratic deformations' is a workers' state under conditions
of backwardness and isolation which can still be reformed through
the restoration of party, trade union and state democracy, ie a
return to the control of the workers and peasants and where, if
only in vestigial form, these organisations still exist under the
pressure of the workers.

Some sects have bowed down before Castro as the
leader and organiser of a 'healthy workers' state'. They went
even further and compared his 'struggle against bureaucracy' with
that of Trotsky against Stalinism. They actually committed the
indecency of publishing the photographs of Trotsky and Castro
together as fighters against bureaucracy and for democratic
socialism. They thus showed that they understood neither the role
of Trotsky as an immortal fighter against the Stalinist
bureaucracy nor Castro's role as the incarnation of the Cuban
Stalinist bureaucracy.

Words are cheap. 'Castro's struggle' against
the Cuban bureaucracy was no different in essence to that of
Stalin on occasions against the Russian bureaucracy. Stalin as a
Bonapartist dictator sometimes attacked the 'bureaucracy' in
words. He went further on occasions and leaned on the workers
and peasants. This happened when the greedy bureaucrats went too
far in their swindling, speculation and plundering of the state
and threatened to devour the foundations of the state.

Stalin took action even against high-up
bureaucrats and certainly against wide sections of the lower
ranks of the bureaucracy. This was to preserve the Stalinist
system by making scapegoats of some bureaucrats, especially the
lower ranks.

Fundamentally, Castro's role in Cuba is the
same. True, he played the leading personal role in the guerrilla
war, the overthrow of Batista, the movement towards expelling
imperialism, and overthrowing landlordism and capitalism.

Stalin had lived through a proletarian
revolution together with the existence of a workers' democracy,
yet he carried out a counter-revolution against it. But right fromthe first day, the Cuban revolution was deformed and
distorted. The proletariat never held political power
directly as in Russia. The fact that even today probably the
decisive bulk of the Cuban people, as the Chinese people too,
support the regime at this stage, alters nothing as to its
character. Castro's strictures against bureaucracy, like
Stalin's, are necessary if he is to preserve the role of
'Bonapartist arbiter' and 'father of the people'.

Now, when dealing with Ethiopia, some of those
who bow the knee before Castro, declare Mengistu - whose regime
is basically a copy of that of Russia, China and Cuba - to be
'fascist'. This particular example of contortions and eclectic
acrobatics can only be greeted with gales of laughter by genuine
Marxism.

State Capitalism?

Why is Mengistu's regime 'state capitalist' and
different to the others? There is no explanation. They merely
echo the arguments of the student, Maoist ultra-lefts in
Ethiopia. At least the Ethiopian Maoists have the consistency to
declare - as the Maoists have done everywhere - that Russia too
is 'state capitalist'.

The proof of the 'fascist' character of the
Mengistu regime, they claim, is the vicious repression, the
executions, the repression of national rights and the national
revolutions of a similar character to that of Ethiopia - of
Eritrea and the Ogaden - and the suppression of other national
minorities. The crushing and dissolution of independent trade
unions and all the nascent democratic organs of self-expression
of the workers and peasants is certainly to be condemned. So also
is the concentration of power into the hands of the Army junta
clique and the dictatorship of Mengistu.

But one rubs one's eyes in disbelief at the
shallowness of the 'Marxism' of these self-styled Trotskyists'.
For every crime committed by Mengistu in this regard, Stalin
committed a hundred times more! The repression of independent
organs of the workers must have reached a state of perfection by
the bueaucracy in Russia. Puppet 'unions' exist which resemble
the Arbeitfront of the Nazis in Germany. The Russian
'Communist' Party is the arm of the bureaucracy itself and has
long ago ceased to be a workers' party. Concentration camps, or
'labour camps' as they are called, and psychiatric 'hospitals'
have been established for all dissidents - right or left.

The national oppression of the minorities, and
especially of worker dissidents, reached levels never reached
even under Tsarism. A one-party totalitarian machine has been
established without allowing any opposition anywhere among
workers, peasants and intellegentsia. The regimentation of art,
science and government into a Stalinist straitjacket, without any
independent initiative or thought, has been unequalled in history
except, possibly, in Hitler's Germany. More or less, that is the
picture common to all the proletarian Bonapartist states,
including China and Cuba.

Some of the sects pick up the characterisation
of the Mengistu regime from the Maoists. They also support the
heroic guerrilla peasant war in the Ogaden and in Eritrea, which,
if victorious, would probably end in a carbon copy of Cuba or of
Mengistu's Ethiopia. That would be inevitable with a backward
economy and with the limited nationalist leadership looking to
their own resources alone and not seeing the necessity of linking
up with the workers of the advanced capitalist countries. If
there is a struggle for national rights of these peoples - so
long as there is not the direct intervention of imperialism - we
would give critical support to the struggle as we would for
example to the struggle of the Ukranian people for independence
from Stalinist Russia. An independent socialist soviet Ukraine
would prepare the way for a genuine and voluntary socialist
soviet federation of all the peoples of the USSR. This could only
be achieved by the overthrow of the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy
by the Russian working class.

Support for Revolution

Unfortunately in Eritrea and the Ogaden, as in
Ethiopia for the next period, democracy will receive short
shrift. This is inevitable on the bases of a peasant war, as well
as the Stalinist ideology of their leaders.

But as we did in the case of Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia (Kampuchea) and for that matter China also - we would
give support without closing our eyes to the inevitability of
Stalinist totalitarian regimes whatever the result of the
conflict.

Because of its character as a national
struggle (though on the basis of state ownership and the
elimination of landlordism and capitalism) and the limited
outlook of its leadership, neither the Somalis nor the Eritreans
have a means of influencing or winning over the peasant soldiers
of Ethiopia. They too have carried through a revolution and are
influenced by the national idea of a united Ethiopia.

The proletarian and far sighted policy of Lenin
- in standing firmly for the bourgeois-democratic right of
self-determination - has no place unfortunately in the policy of
the Ethiopians. But neither is there present, on any side in the
conflict, the other policies of Marxism - democratic-centralism
in the Party, democracy in the soviets, trade unions and so on.

Our policy is dictated first by the
international socialist proletarian revolution and its interests.
The defeat of imperialism and the overthrow of landlordism and
capitalism in the Horn of Africa are big steps forward.

This is despite the conflict between 'socialist
states' which sows confusion among the advanced workers and the
proletariat generally. The complexity of the problem and the need
to keep our ideas clear is shown by the way imperialism and the
Russian and Cuban bureaucracy have changed sides.

Yesterday the imperialists supported Haile
Selassie and the landlord-capitalist regime in Ethiopia against
Somalia and the guerrilla movement in Eritrea. Russia and Cuba
financed, armed and organised the Somali state and supported the
guerrillas in Eritrea with arms, finance and technical
assistance. Ethiopia assumed more importance in their eyes, with
the collapse of the Emperor, followed by the overthrow of the
semi-feudal landlord-capitalist regime. Ethiopia has 35 million
people against approximately 2 or 3 million each in Eritrea and
Somalia.

Opportunistically taking advantage of the civil
war in Ethiopia, organised by the landlord-capitalist
counter-revolution, President Barre of Somalia sent troops into
the Ogaden. He hoped for the disintegration and collapse of the
Ethiopian revolution. He was nationally limited and
short-sighted, interested only in a 'greater Somalia'.
Undoubtedly the imperialists, surreptitiously through the
semi-feudal reactionary Arab states like Saudi-Arabia, gave
support to the Somalis, as they now give support to the Eritreans
despite the social character of the movement in Eritrea. They
wish to weaken Ethiopia and strike a blow against the Russian
bureaucracy.

The Russian bureaucracy and Castro have changed
horses in mid-stream after vainly attempting to persuade the
Somali rulers to make a compromise and establish a federation of
Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia. This would undoubtedly have been
the best solution, given the character of all these regimes
either as Bonapartist deformed workers' states, or such states in
the process of formation.

When the Somalis rejected this proposal the
bureaucracy switched sides. It is not certain that the Ethiopians
were in agreement with this proposal either. Now they are trying
to negotiate some form of agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopea.
If the Eritreans do not accept some form of limited 'autonomy'
Cuba and Russia seem certain to support the crushing in blood of
the Eritrean attempt at self-determination. The imperialists,
unable to intervene directly, will weep crocodile tears about the
national and democratic rights of the Eritrean people. (Yesterday
they brutally tried to suppress the rights of the Vietnamese
people.)

But what is really entertaining about these
dramatic conflicts is the position of some of the sects. They
solemnly declaim that Russia (correctly) is a deformed workers'
state and Cuba (incorrectly) a relatively 'healthy' workers'
state. But in no way do they explain how and why the relatively
'healthy' workers' state of Cuba or the deformed workers' state
of Russia actively helps the 'fascist' state of Ethiopia to
establish itself and suppress the national rights of the people
of Eritrea who are attempting to establish a 'Marxist' regime and
the Somalis of the Ogaden and the other minorities.

Undoubtedly, on the basis of land distribution,
the overwhelming majority of the Ethiopian peasants support the
Ethiopian regime for want of an alternative.

It is theoretically possible of course that for
the purpose of 'defence' against other capitalist states, a
deformed workers' state or even a healthy workers' state could
ally itself with a reactionary or fascist state. Stalin's Russia
did this in 1939 with the 'non-aggression' pact with Hitler's
Germany.

But what strategic necessity was there for
Brezhnev and Castro to switch from supporting Somalia and Eritrea
to their 'fascist' rivals? The rulers of the deformed workers'
states would look with trepidation at the rise of a healthy
workers' state in the industrialised countries because of the
social reverberations it would provoke in their own countries.
But they would welcome the establishment of social regimes on the
pattern of their own regimes in the backward and neo-colonial
countries.

This strengthens them internationally against
their capitalist imperialist rivals. The basic world antagonism
between the social structures of these countries and capitalist
countries remains.

Stalinism and Fascism

Ethiopia is a country far more backward than
Russian Czarism or even pre-revolutionary China, and is under
conditions of civil war on every front. With a leadership which
takes Cuba and China as its model, without revolutionary
training, this officer leadership has moved towards Stalinist
conceptions in the course of the revolution. But we cannot throw
out the baby with the bathwater. We must separate out the
enormously progressive kernel from the reactionary wrappings.
Landlordism and capitalism have been eliminated and this decisive
fact will have far-flung effects on the whole of the African
revolution in the coming epoch.

Not for nothing did Trotsky explain to the
American Socialist Workers Party that, separated from state
ownership of industry and the land, the political regime in
Russia was fascist! There was nothing to distinguish the
political regime of Stalin from that of Hitler except the
decisive fact that one defended and had its privileges based on
state ownership while the other had its privileges, power, income
and prestige based on the defence of private property. That was a
fundamental and decisive difference! There is no difference in
the fundamentals of economic and political structure of Ethiopia
from China, Syria, Russia or any of the deformed workers' states.

The latest events in Indo-China have served
again to show the ridiculous contortions of the policies of all
the sects. Our tendency gave wholehearted support to the struggle
of the Vietnamese 'Communist' Party of Ho Chi Minh and its
Laotian and Cambodian off-shoots intheir peasant
guerrilla war against American and world imperialism and
their native puppets.

We supported the struggle unconditionally and
wholeheartedly. We supported it because it was a colonial war for
liberation. We would have supported such a war even under
bourgeois or petit-bourgois leadership which had fought merely
for the right of national self-determination alone. But it
inevitably became a war for social liberation as well as national
liberation - in the sense of fighting for the elimination
also of landlordism and capitalism. Without this, the struggle
could not have been carried on for decades against overwhelming
military odds.

How far the sects have strayed from the Marxist
or Trotskyist method was shown by the polemics between two
different sects of the same international tendency about how far
the Vietnamese were 'unconscious' Trotskyists operating on the
basis of the permanent revolution.

None of these worthies have understood the
peculiar character of the epoch as far as the colonial or
ex-colonial areas of the world are concerned. Nor have they
understood the inevitable perversion of the revolution under
either open Stalinist - or pseudo-communist leadership - or that
of radical sections of the officer caste. They have not
understood the inevitable consequences when a colonial revolution
is led to its progressive and 'final' conclusion of eliminating
capitalism and landlordism but when the main force is not that of
the working class with a Marxist leadership.

When the main force is a peasant army using
classic peasant tactics of guerrilla war, then it must result in
a 'deformed workers' state' evenif that were not the
aim of the leaders. In the event of an army coup of the
younger officers, allied to 'intellectuals' and students, the
consequences would - inevitably - be the same.

This is particularly the case given the world
environment of strong Bonapartist workers' states, in the form of
Stalinist Russia and other countries. Taken together with the
existence of the imperialist powers there could be no other
outcome.

Of course if there were in existence healthy
workers' states - for instance in Russia, or one of the big
industrialised states of Europe, or Japan - then the results and
the possibilities would be entirely different. The proletariat
and people of the advanced workers' states would give aid and
assistance to a workers' state in a backward country, linking the
economies together, and sending tens of thousands of technicians
to small countries and hundreds of thousands to one with a big
population. That would mean rapid industrialisation plus workers'
democracy. That is what Lenin meant when he said Africa could
move straight from tribalism to communism.

But given the present relationship of class
forces in international affairs, with classical reformism and
Stalinist reformism dominant in the workers' movement of the
advanced countries, such a conclusion in Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos was ruled out.

Indo-China Clashes

That is why our tendency, while wholeheartedly
supporting the Vietnamese and Indo-Chinese revolutions, warned
the workers and peasants of these countries that while they
should actively support the struggle and fight for social and
national liberation, at the same time the dominance of the
struggle by the Stalinist leadership would mean that while an
enormous social step forward would be taken by the victory of the
national liberation movement, it would be succeeded by a new
enslavement by the totalitarian Stalinist bureaucracy. Without a
Marxist party and without Marxist leadership the goal of the
'Communist Party' leadership would be a state in the image of the
so-called 'socialism' of Russia or China.

We appealed to the advanced workers of Britain,
America, France and the world, to support the social and national
liberation struggle of the Indo-Chinese peoples, because it
weakened imperialism and world capitalism. The liberation of the
productive forces of these countries, by the overthrow of the
rule of capital, would be of immense long-term benefit to the
people of these countries and also to the world proletariat.

But we never deceived ourselves or the
workers and peasants of the world as to the inevitable nature
(the class relationship of forces) of the regimes which would be
set up in these countries.

We warned of, and predicted, the inevitable
setting up of nationalist totalitarian Stalinist regimes in
these countries but even we had not expected just how far
they would go in their distortions.

The armed clashes between Cambodia and Vietnam
are a crushing condemnation of all those 'Trotskyist' sects in
Britain and internationally who did not understand the class
nature of these regimes and their Stalinist character. There was
no surprise in these events for our tendency. The clashes on the
borders between Russia and China when tens of thousands were
killed had shown what nationalist bureaucrats are capable of.

These bureaucracies cannot look beyond the
boundaries of the national state. Behind these clashes in former
Indo-China are the aspirations of the Vietnamese to set up an
Indo-China federation of 'socialist states'. Obviously this would
have been of immense benefit to the economies of all these
countries. But the reason that the Cambodians are against the
setting up of such a federation is that under conditions of
Bonapartist totalitarianism they would inevitably come under the
nationalist domination and national oppression of the Vietnamese
bureaucracy. Leaving aside the virulent national chauvinism of
the Cambodian Stalinists, this would be as inevitable as it was
in Stalinist China and in Russia.

For the same reason, the Vietnamese Stalinists,
in their turn, would refuse to federate with Stalinist China.
They know, as the minorities in China have seen, that they would
come under the national oppression of the Chinese bureaucracy.
Even though economically it would be of immense benefit, they
would not agree to this, no more than would the Chinese
bureaucracy agree to a federation with Russia, though
economically and even in terms of world power politics, it would
be colossally beneficial to the peoples and the economies of both
these countries. What stands in the way are the national vested
interests of the bureaucracies of all these countries.

Only workers' democracy, without any hint of
national superiority or advantage as in the days of Lenin and
Trotsky, can have such a programme. But a Bonapartist regime,
basing itself on privilege and inequality, is incapable of such a
policy: the chauvinistic excesses of Stalinist Russia and China
are proof of this. Bonapartist totalitarian regimes by their very
nature, can never look beyond the narrow horizon of the national
state. By the very nature of bureaucracy and its privileges they
are nationally limited.

Basing themselves on peasants, students and
intellectuals, and without the decisive domination and
participation of the working class, they are inevitably
nationally limited.

Afghanistan

The working class can secure its emancipation
and the domination of society only by overcoming all the
prejudices of the past - national, racial, caste, sex or any
other. But only the working class and no other - and only under
Marxist leadership at that - is capable of this feat. But the
emancipation of the workers means the emancipation also of the
petit-bourgeois strata in society who, under the leadership of
the working class, and only under these conditions, would be
capable of rising to these heights.

The petit-bourgeois and the intellectuals can
adopt the standpoint of the proletariat only by breaking
completely with their origins and the outlook of their class.
Under modern conditions that is extremely difficult where genuine
Marxists, as in the early days of Marx and Engels, have been
reduced to a handful.

This is particularly the case today when the
struggle is not merely in the ideological sphere but where the
immediate issue in country after country is the transformation of
society. In this situation it is easy for the intellectuals to
come under the domination of the muddled ideas of Stalinism in
its various forms.

Only a strong workers' movement dominated by
Marxism could make the metamorphosis of such intellectuals
possible.

This is especially difficult in colonial or
neo-colonial countries where the problems are immediate, where
the masses live an almost animal existence, where also there are
insuperable obstacles to modernisation and the development of
society on the basis of the semi-feudal landlord capitalist
regimes.

It is easier for the intellectuals, the radical
officers, even civil servants and upper layers of professional
people, doctors, dentists, lawyers and so on to make the
transition to Stalinist Bonapartism than to support genuine but
tiny Marxist tendencies. Especially this is so in most of these
countries where 'Marxism' does not exist as an organised
tendency.

The 'Marxist-Leninism' of Russia, China or
Ethiopia suits them perfectly. It fits all their prejudices. A
'socialism' where the elites of state, party, industry, army and
the professions have a standard of living way above that of the
masses seems perfectly normal and natural to them. A society
where these strata become the dominant and governing caste, has
an enormous attraction for them, especially as they see the
enormous strides which backward countries make with a forced
march of 'socialism'.

Thus it is easy for them to rationalise their
class position. They have a hatred of the corrupt landlords and
capitalists under whose control their societies and countries are
either decaying or only inching ahead. They have a contempt for
the downtrodden masses of peasants and even for the weak working
class.

These stratas, apart from their economic
position, are imbued with an overwhelming conceit and concern for
their own importance in society. They are concerned with perks,
status, standing, power, privileges, income and prestige. Thus,
it is easy in the modern world to see how they can embrace
'socialism' on the pattern of Cuba, for example.

In the past period the fresh example of
Afghanistan underlines the analysis we have made of the colonial
revolution. The 'Communist' Party of this terribly backward
country was only formed in the last decade or so. Like the Baath
Party in Syria, it had no difficulty in swallowing the doctrine
of 'Islam' as well as 'communism'. It has done so because
religious superstition has deep roots among the overwhelmingly
backward peasant majority, 90 per cent of whom are illiterate.

Complete Transformation

Now, as with the Baath Party in Syria, the CP
leaders in Afghanistan have allied themselves with the radical
lower and middle ranks of the officer caste in the army.

The immediate issue which precipitated the coup
was famine - as in Ethiopia - and the impossibility of the
corrupt, semi-feudal Asiatic ruler, to cope with it. Afghanistan
has had many coups in the past decades leading to different
tribal leaders and groups gaining power. They merely changed the
tops, leaving the social structure intact. The same corruption
inevitably developed, leading, when the imposition had become
unbearable on the masses, to a famine, or through foreign
intrigue, to a new coup. Thus, social relations were contained in
the same vicious circle. This new coup opens up the possibility
of striking in a new direction. 'Communists' have become Prime
Minister and President and also have a dominant role in the
government. This indicates in which direction the officers wish
to go. One of the first acts of the new regime has been to seize
the lands of the monarchy, which, though overthrown by the former
Daud(3) regime, still possessed 20 per cent of the land in
Afghanistan! This is a new departure and may be the beginning of
a complete transformation of social relations.

As in Poland, where the Polish Stalinist
bureaucracy came to an agreement with the Catholic church, so in
Afghanistan the Communist Party leadership, together with the
officers, can arrive at an agreement with the mullahs of Islam.
The fact that Taraki, the new Prime Minister, is the leader of a
so-called Communist Party alters nothing. He pursues the same
policy as that of the Syrian leaders of the Baath.

In the case of Afghanistan, only two roads are
possible at this stage. The working class is miniscule. Sections
of the intelligentsia, and apparently the majority of the
officers and a great part of the professionals, want to construct
a modern civilised state. The peasants want the land.

On the road of capitalism and landlordism,
there is no way forward. The army officers wish to take the road
traversed by Outer Mongolia. In fact these peculiar changes are
only possible because of the international context. The crisis of
imperialism and capitalism, the impasse of the backward countries
of the third world and the existence of the proletarian
revolutions in the West, are powerful factors in the case of
Afghanistan.

The barbarous regimes also of Pakistan, Iran
and nearby India have no attractive force. The army officers,
many, if not most, trained in Russia, are attracted when they see
the consequences of the Stalinist regime. It has a big effect on
the tribesmen, of similar peoples and even the same tribes, in
areas bordering Russia when they see the modernisation of areas
of Russia which formerly had as low a standard of living, and
just as great illiteracy and ignorance as themselves.

Marxist Approach

The industrialisation, complete literacy and
high standards in comparison to Afghanistan, are bound to impress
these strata. In contrast, the backwardness and barbarism on
which the nobility thrived in Afghanistan cannot but appal all
the best elements - the intelligentsia, the professionals and
even the officer caste. They wish to break out from poverty,
ignorance and dirt from which their country suffers. The
capitalists of the West, with unemployment and industrial
stagnation, offer them nothing. They wish to break away from the
vicious circle of tribal rulers and different military regimes
which change nothing fundamental.

The world crisis of capitalism hits the
backward regions of the world even harder, and impels them to
draw the conclusion that capitalism offers no way forward.

The 'republican' regime of Daud - incidentally,
backed and propped up by Moscow in the past - alters nothing. The
upheavals and coups, leading to mere changes of dynasties by
different clans of the nobility during the last fifty years have
been completely sterile. The nobility and the relations on the
land on which they were based, was the main obstacle to
modernisation.

Under these circumstances, if the new regime
leans on the support of the peasants and transforms society, then
the way will be cleared for the development of a regime in
Afghanistan, like that of Cuba, Syria or Russia. This, for the
first time for centuries, will bring Afghanistan society forward
to the modern world. If the socialist transformation is
completed, it could comprise a new blow at capitalism and
landlordism in the rest of capitalist-landlord Asia, especially
in the area of South Asia. It will have incalculable effects on
the Pathans and Baluchis of Pakistan and will have a similar
effect on the peoples on the borders of Iran. The rotting regime
of Pakistan in coming years will face complete disintegration. A
revamping of social relations in Afghanistan can further
contribute to the decay of this regime.

The tribesmen will be influenced by the process
taking place among their brothers across the borders. On the
North West frontiers of Pakistan and among the Baluchis there is
already endemic and simmering revolt, with these peoples looking
towards a unity with their brothers in Afghanistan. The effect
would be in widening circles, the repercussions of which could be
felt in Iran and further afield, also in India.

This is the road which the 'Communist Party',
which holds power together with the radical officers, will take.
The opposition of the old forces in Afghanistan, as in Ethiopia,
will in all probability impel them in this direction.

If they temporise, possibly under the influence
of the Russian ambassador and the Russian regime, they will
prepare the way for a ferocious counter-revolution based on the
threatened nobility and the mullahs. If successful,
counter-revolution would restore the old regime on the bones of
hundreds of thousands of peasants, the massacres of the radical
officers and the near extermination of the educated elite. For
the moment - until there is a movement of the only advanced class
which can bring a transition moving in the direction of socialism
in the industrially developed countries - the most progressive
development in Afghanistan seems at the present time to be the
installation of proletarian Bonapartism.

While not closing our eyes to the new
contradictions this will involve, on the basis of a transitional
economy of a workers' state, without workers' democracy,
Marxists, in a sober fashion, will support the emergence of such
a state and the further weakening not only of imperialism and
capitalism but also of regimes basing themselves on the remnants
of feudalism in the most backward countries.

Notes

(1) Fulgencia
Batista was the US backed Cuban dictator, from 1933 until his
overthrow by the guerrilla army led by Castro in 1959.

(2) On 25 April
1974, a movement of armed forces officers overthrew the Caetano
dictatorship in Portugal, ushering in a revolutionary crisis.

(3) Mohammed Daud
came to power, overthrowing the monarchy in 1973. He was
overthrown by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council on 27 April
1978, which brought the Taraki regime to power.